Bethany nodded and moved her hand from the man's shoulder as he spoke. She had a good feeling about Frank; he seemed like a man who had a kind heart. Whatever came their way, Beth felt that God sent this man to watch over her and, more importantly, Anthony. In return, she would do her best to keep him safe as well, for it was only the right thing to do.

So when she heard him mutter, "I've gotta get some sleep soon. These things crawling around outside are driving me nuts-o," she found the perfect opportunity to begin repaying her faith in him.

"Then rest, Frank," he said gently and holding up the pistol in her hand with a soft smile, "Anthony and I will be able to keep an eye on things here."

Anthony, meanwhile, had been looking through a crack in one of the boarded windows. He saw a lot of the ones that Mama Betty had told him to stay away from. There were so many. He was glad that he was safe with Mama Betty and Mr. Frank. God, he closed his eyes and prayed, if it wouldn't be too much, could you bring more people here so Me and Mama Betty and Mister Frank aren't so lonely? Sincerely, Anthony. Thank you! He didn't see the strange figures, moving unlike all the bad things, coming towards them...

Ignot pulled out his Machete and kept USP tactical uncovered and accessible. Everyone crossed the street quickly, wanting to get back out of the bitter cold they rushed headlong into the courtyard of the to buildings. Ignot's heart stopped for a quick second as the group walked into the potential deathtrap and he could only stand and stare, his gloved hands on both of the pistols in his belt, watching each and every window that he could. If someone wanted to kill them all, now was the time. The first group made it into the building unharmed, their tracks getting trashed by the people's behind them until it was one long line of footprints. They had various Melee weapons out and a few had a pistol underslung, dual handing the weapons. But Ignot still didn't move.

Was that movement? Ignot pulled out his pistol and pointed it up at the window, tense and ready for a shot. He knew that at this distance the pistol would have next to no chance of hitting whatever was in the window accurately, but at least it would force them to get their heads down. It was all the way up on the 12th floor near the top. He sat and stared at the window, trying to see anything else to give him a reason to shoot, but no more movement came from the window.

"You okay?" Ignot didn't jump physically, but Leeland just scared him in a manner not many people could claim. Sighing heavily, he put his pistol back into his belt and nodded. Pointing toward the door, he motioned for Leeland to follow him and walked in. Everyone else had scattered on the lower floor already like they were trained to do. Ignot took his Machete and held it in a loose grip next to him so that he could pull it up quickly in case of an attack. Time for clearing.

Logged

"May I take a moment to tell you the joys of National Socialism?" - Also Red Beret

Liam sighed heavily, watching his breath mist in the air. It was childish, especially under the circumstances, but the snow around them was a novelty he couldn’t help but enjoy. It got cold, back home in Wellington, but it never snowed. He walked over to Alex, the ghost of the smile he used to wear touching his lips at the satisfying crunch of his shoes on the powder.

The nascent smile died as he approached Alex. She was a constant reminder of why everything had gone to hell. Well, further into hell than they’d already been. He’d lost two friends because of her, when she and Jason had gone chasing after the rest of the group, looking for excitement, and left no one on the roof of the apartment.

And, quite apart from the deaths Locke and Mr. Matheson, the attack on the apartment had caused Trista to go further into her shell than she had been before. Weirdly, that seemed the worst part to Liam. He’d come so close to bringing the damaged girl out into the light again, just from talking to her, only to have her snatched back into the dark.

He hated himself for hating Alex. He knew, deep down, that it was pointless.

He forced a smile as he reached Alex, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He’d never told her how he felt, there were too few of them to allow ill feeling to start tearing them apart.

“Ready to go?” he asked, keeping his tone light with an effort. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing out here.”

Logged

Now hollow fires burn out to black, and lights are guttering low.Square your shoulders, lift your pack, and leave your friends and go.Oh, never fear, man, naught's to dread, look not to left nor right:In all the endless road you tread, there's nothing but the night.

Alex looked over at Liam and nodded. Ever since Matheson's death, like Jason, Liam wanted nothing to do with her. Alex adjusted her pilot's hat and walked past Liam.

"Yeah, let's go," she muttered. "Where do you want to head first?"

Alex didn't want to be here. She wanted to stay at the apartment. She specifically told Ignot that she didn't want to leave, but he pretty much forced her to. she wanted to take post and stand guard. She didn't want to be out in the cold risking her life and fucking other people's lives at the same time. She then adjusted her gloves and ripped off the scarf around her neck; she hated scarves. She picked up her bat and looked over at Liam with tired eyes. She inwardly hissed as she could feel the cuts scrape against her jacket.

"Fuck, I don't know where to go," she finally said. "Do you?"

Logged

It's been a hard day's nightAge is no guarantee of efficiency 3DS friend code: 4613-6707-8466

Liam shifted his grip on the fire axe he'd liberated from the building across the street the first time they'd come here. His knuckles were white underneath his gloves as he looked up at the empty windows above them. The whole purpose of this outing made him uncomfortable. Apparently, Ignot had decided that they needed to be able to kill people now. Liam had made his peace with killing the zombies, eventually, but the idea of killing another human, another survivor was repulsive.

He sighed again, pulling down the hood of his jacket and running a hand through his tangled hair. When this was over, he'd take his doubts up with Billie. Out of all of the family, she was one of the few he still felt a real connection with. He was sure she was having the same thoughts he was. That if people were out there, they would be survivors like them, not extras from a Mad Max movie hell-bent on stealing their supplies and killing them all.

I'm just following Ignot.

He wondered how long that would stay true.

Logged

Now hollow fires burn out to black, and lights are guttering low.Square your shoulders, lift your pack, and leave your friends and go.Oh, never fear, man, naught's to dread, look not to left nor right:In all the endless road you tread, there's nothing but the night.

Alex walked by Liam and headed deeper into the building. She didn't know what they were looking for per se, but Ignot wanted them to look around. Why? For what? Electricity? If all possible, they could find a way to put it into the apartment without going out again. Doesn't Ignot know that the majority of the people with him are teenagers? Alex gripped her baseball bat and continued forward through the deserted hallways. Scavenging wasn't all that great anymore. Alex breathed out to see her breath in front of her. She felt the need for a cigarette. She looked around and sighed. What the hell was she looking for anyway?

"You see anything of value to us, Liam?"

Logged

It's been a hard day's nightAge is no guarantee of efficiency 3DS friend code: 4613-6707-8466

"That depends on how valuable you think dust is," Liam replied, brushing a thick layer of the stuff from a table. "I don't think anyone's been here for a while."

Stupid thing to say, of course. No one had been anywhere for a while. He flicked at a light switch experimentally, with no result. Whether there was no power to the building or the bulbs had simply blown, he couldn't say.

Logged

Now hollow fires burn out to black, and lights are guttering low.Square your shoulders, lift your pack, and leave your friends and go.Oh, never fear, man, naught's to dread, look not to left nor right:In all the endless road you tread, there's nothing but the night.

Leland and Ignot carefully made their way down the right corridor of the building, examining the offices. They had agreed that Ignot would watch the hallways and staircases while Leland made the initial sweep of the room, then they would switch.

After three of these rotations, Leland stepped into an office like all the others, being careful not to slip on the papers scattered on the floor. He slung his rifle onto his back and sighed. It was more or less a crapshoot. Offices were not well known for their stocks of food and materials.

"This isn't looking good." He thought. We need antibiotics and medicine, that's priority one." He knew that even if there were no serious injuries in the near future, Flu season was arriving, and plenty of people died every year from the virus. But here he was, checking accountant's desks and travel agent's files for useful scraps. A flurry of papers startled him, and he gasped when a cool breeze hit his ankles. In the corner of the office, behind an overturned desk, light spilled in. Pulling the desk out, he could see that a car had hit the building at some point, smashing in the concrete wall. Marveling at the destruction, his foot hit something that responded with a small clanging.

"Oh? Whadda' we got here?" he said to himself. He bent down and retrieved a small length of rebar from beneath a ream of papers. It was no more than a foot and a half long and coated in dried blood. Yet, there was no corpse in the room; a bad sign.

He gripped the rod tight and whirled around, half-expecting a rotting assistant manager to be on his jugular. He would have to fight it off with what was likely the creature's last defense in its old life...but nothing. He left the room and tapped Ignot on the shoulder, presenting the bloody steel rod.

"L-l-looks like s-someone took a crack at one. N-n-no bodies around though. I got a b-bad feelin' it might still be...up" He could no longer tell if he was stuttering or if it was the cold getting to him. Either way, he was keeping the steel bar, he had no melee weapon on him.

Alex watched as Liam played with the light switch after he wiped his hands off from the dust lying about. Alex looked through the room to find anything of use there. She squinted her eyes to adjust to the cloudy sun. They were in an office of sort of one of the apartments. It was empty and it was virtually spotless of supplies that they needed. Alex took a step forward as glass cracked under her boot. She looked down to see she had stepped on a picture. She kneeled down to see a picture of a man and woman smiling at her. Alex turned away and stood back up.

She gripped her bat and looked deeper into the study. She let her hand glide along the bookcase as she read the titles of the book. They were mostly romance novels and political satire. However, there were also classic literature on the shelf as well. Alex took off From the Earth to the Moon and Frankenstein. She turned back to Liam.

"Hey, do you have these at the apartment?" she asked before she looked up and heard a growling noise.

Logged

It's been a hard day's nightAge is no guarantee of efficiency 3DS friend code: 4613-6707-8466

The work was long, tedious, and hard. Clearing several thousand square feet of space over several floors ended up tiring everyone involved, and from the looks of it, there was not much to be scavenged from this place. Ignot turned flicked open a cabinet somewhere on the 11th floor after several hours of clearing and searching. Alex had almost been attacked, but Liam was an guard and killed the Zombie in the closet before it could attack. He got worried, but reminded himself that this was the whole point of this little shindig. They needed to be more alert and on guard. Hiding in the apartment forever wasn't going to work. They understood that before the attack on their home.... what had they lost?

"Hey, got some canned spaghetti over here. Pantry's got slim pickings, but it seems like we can work with it." Leeland poked his head out of the pantry, half a granola bar hanging out of his mouth. Ignot smirked under his mask. Kai managed to pack a power lunch for everyone before they left, the granola bar was the 'snack'. That and Leeland looked like a high schooler that got caught stealing them.

"Good. Mark the door." He said, looking one last time at the raided bedroom that they had cleared. He leaned up against the bedroom wall and simply stared toward the bed. It had a draped bio hazard tarp covering it like a tent, hanging from the roof. You could see the red covers and the barest figures of two people under them. Ignot couldn't tell if they were dead due to the infection, or if they had done each other in. It seemed like a couple. Sighing heavily, he got distracted for a second as he wondered who these people were. He saw the pictures on the wall of a couple that liked to travel and have fun, seemingly in a family way too. It was a shame what this had taken from the world.

"All clear. Door's marked with chalk. Are we moving up?" Leeland asked, finding him looking toward the bed. But the thing that caught Ignot's attention wasn't the fact that Leeland was talking to him, but the fact that right as he pointed upward, a resounding crash blew through the floor above them. Ignot instinctively took a ready position with machete at the ready, with Leeland a split second behind. Waiting for a brief second, all the pair could hear was their own breathing dispersing through the empty room.

No... scraping. Hushed voices.

<Tag Bethany, Anthony, and Frank>

Looking over at Leeland, the sudden realization passed over his face as the through passed between the two.

Zombies don't talk.

Ignot nearly took off, walking as fast and quietly as he could out of the room. Emerging a worried looking Alex and Sebastian came out of the room they were clearing, but after a quick motion for silence toward them, the question on their lips was quickly silenced. The others soon came up, the motion for silence carried over as they approached the stairwell as a group. The stairs led right up to a hallway on the 12th floor, which was straight as an arrow, right up to the broken window at the end of it. Some door were askew and others blatantly open, but the one that was closed was Ignot's target. Motioning for a stack behind him, people started to unsling their weapons and check the breaches, just like he taught them. They were really coming together. Two stayed behind at the stairwell to cover their rears, and two split off for each side to quickly check the apartments they were passing just to make sure they weren't interrupted by zombies.

Quickly, Ignot and Leeland pressed up against the doorjam, backs and heads pressed up against the hard wood. Everyone but Jason and Sebastian stacked up behind them, ready to back them up if something happened. Ignot looked toward the rest of them and nodded. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife as Ignot carefully reached for the doorknob and twisted it open. Gently, he pressed it forward, but met resistance almost immediately. Shaking his head, he let the door go again, hearing it gently slide back into place. Motioning to Liam and Harold, he pointed to his leg and then to the door.

They both nodded and came around, slinging their weapons and getting some sort of kick ready. On an unspoken count of three, the two ran forward and kicked the door open, the shoddily built wood splintering and bursting inward. They both ducked back into the hallway, while Ignot and Leeland spiraled inward, Guns at the ready.

"DROP YOU WEAPONS AND GET ON THE GROUND!" Ignot yeleld as loud as he could, the dust settling quickly to reveal a kid and a woman, both still in the reaction phase of the door getting kicked in. They looked toward their weapons, but after seeing 4 more people walk inside behind them (Liam, Alex, Harold, and Sebastian) they thought better of it and raised their hands. Ignot heard more yelling as the others scattered around the apartment and one mroe man was brought into the main living area and his hands were high too. They all looked very scared, but resolute.

"Search them, make sure they can't shoot us behind out backs." Ignot said.

<Tag Bethany, Anthony, and Frank>

"Just cooperate and we'll sort out the bad guys later." He said.

<Tag Daniel and Kenneth, you heard the break in from street level>

<tag Everyone>

Logged

"May I take a moment to tell you the joys of National Socialism?" - Also Red Beret

Liam propped his axe up against the door-jamb and moved toward the shaken survivors, shouldering past the others through the splinters of door littering the ground. He spread his empty palms out in front of him and tried to keep his face friendly. Inwardly, he was fuming at Ignot's heavy-handedness. You didn't deal with potential friends and fellow survivors by busting through the door like a SWAT team. Now, more than ever, he was determined to not fall into Ignot's mould.

"Hey," he said, softly. "It's okay. No one's going to hurt you."

He looked over his shoulder at Ignot and the rest. His tone cooled considerably.

"If any of you touch them, I'm leaving the apartment," he spoke to all of them, but his eyes stayed on Ignot. "You didn't search me when I met you, and you're not searching a terrified woman and kid."

He turned away before he could see Ignot's reaction. Afraid it would be anger he saw flashing across the man's cold features. Afraid that any moment now he'd hear the bark of a pistol and collapse to the ground. Liam sucked in a deep breath and released it with a shudder. He'd never gone against Ignot before, but he thought it might not be the last time he had to.

Taking another step forward, he kept his hands open and in front of him.

"I promise, no one here is going to hurt you."

« Last Edit: March 11, 2010, 02:35:41 am by Laughing Man »

Logged

Now hollow fires burn out to black, and lights are guttering low.Square your shoulders, lift your pack, and leave your friends and go.Oh, never fear, man, naught's to dread, look not to left nor right:In all the endless road you tread, there's nothing but the night.

Franky growled at their captors. "Anthony, cover your ears," he said quickly before turning back to the man that looked most in charge. "This isn't fucking Viet-goddamn-nam. Do we look like fucking bad guys? Does it look like this woman and this kid are hurt or not wanting to be here? BESIDES being surrounded by zombies? What the fuck is your problem? You know how long it took to set up those barricades? Fuck, man."

The veins on his arm were struggling to hold themselves within his skin and his neck looked twice as thick as it usually did. If it wasn't clear before, it was crystal clear now that Frank Holstenski was pissed.

"You could be con artists. Plenty of people take advantage of kindness. We just have to make sure that you won't kill us while our backs are turned and that you are clean." The look of incredulation crossed everyone's face as they looked toward Ignot.

"Do you really think that I'd leave them here after destroying their barricades? Just from the first look, they are running low on food and ammo. In a situation like this groups are safer than solo action unless you know what you are doing. I'm just making sure we aren't going to regret helping them. So Liam, i say again, search them. Billie, check for wounds or any necessary medical treatment. Alex, Sebastian, and Jason, search the apartment. Get backpacks if you can and give them to our new friends." Ignot turned around at that notion and walked back into the hallway, calling the Leeland back into the apartment.

"Leeland, check their weapons and make sure that they are usable. Try to keep and eye on them." The soldier nodded and walked into the apartment while Ignot took a perch outside.

"They are steadily starting to hate you..."

"Now of all times Illaron?" Ignot whispered, taking off his beanie and rubbing his bald head in agitation.

"Don't you see the contempt? The questioning? It's not to make sure that you are running smoothly, Ignot. It's because they are seeign who you really are. A killer."

Ignot sighed and leaned his head back onto the wall, glasses shimmering in the light, a light rasping coming from the mask he wore like a chain. He did see it.

"Why can't they see i'm trying to help? By being suspicious, it saves lives."

"It doesn't matter to them. You are a monster because you aren't trusting. Because you destroy before you build."

<tag Billie>

Ignot looked up at the disturbance, any rebuttal to Illaron vanished as his last words echoed through his mind.

"What?" He asked flatly.

Logged

"May I take a moment to tell you the joys of National Socialism?" - Also Red Beret

Kenneth sighed a long breath, grasping a busted picture frame holding a photograph of Tanya and her husband, Don. They are no doubt much less enthusiastic at this moment then they appear in this photograph... assuming they're even still alive.

"I made a long, God-awful trip here, Tanya. Hell, mom an' dad's dead, no clue where James got off to... dead too, for all I know. Ahh, shit Tanya, where are ya?"

"Maybe they took off" Kenneth thought to himself. The place did seem like it had been stripped of it's valuables... valuables for what they were during this time, at least. Food had been taken, guns and ammunition... if Don kept any... had been taken. Anything that could be used to carry these items in was taken. "Yeah, they must've took off. Must've." Kenneth was trying to convince himself.

Kenneth stuffed the frame into his backpack as quickly as he could, shouldered it and held is shotgun at the ready. Kenneth knew from his travels that even other humans were sometimes more of a hassle... or a threat... than any zombie. He learned that you can never be too careful.

It was in that moment that Kenneth heard a loud cracking, splintering sound that made him jump. Someone had rammed or kicked a door open.

"DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND GET ON THE GROUND!" It was clear what had been said, but the voice was slightly muffled, like whoever yelled was wearing a hood or a facemask or something. Definitely looters. More voices too low to understand. Another loud voice, more clear, saying something about Vietnam and barricades... probably and old crazy veteran thinking he's got some say because he's been to war or something.

Kenneth stepped further back into the room. "If they want to come down here and cause a ruckus in my sister's home, fine, but they're going to have to get through me first. I ain't letting this shit happen again."

Leland stepped into the apartment and took a deep breath. The tension in the air was doing him no favors, and Ignot’s matter-of-fact diagnosis of the situation did nothing to relieve him either. It seemed closer to paranoia than precaution. Still, Ignot was in charge. Leland holstered his pistol and took a cursory glance around the apartment.

“They don’t have very much of anything.” He thought. He noticed a pair of crowbars leaned up against a cabinet with some other implements of destruction and an aluminum bat next to the window that faced the street. Was this all that they had to defend themselves? As ashamed as he was of their entrance, it did look like these people were on their last legs.

A glint of metal caught his eye and he quickly recognized it as a pistol. The handle stuck out of a small haversack that the woman was standing in front of, defensively. She was huddling a small boy away from the rest of the group. He took a few steps over to them, removed his hat, and squatted down to the boy’s level.

“Hey buddy!” he said softly. He turned his head up to his guardian.

“Hi there. My name is Leland. I’m awful sorry that w-we gave y’all s-such a scare.” He took off his bag and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to the woman.

“Let’s make a deal: a bottle of water fer’ you and the kid, and all you gotta’ do is let me inspect that shooter of yours for everyone’s safety. No tricks, I promise.” He said, shaking the bottle.